The most frequent and annoying thing I see among new and even seasoned bloggers is the repetition of the same content. It is not the matter of plagiarism but more the matter of rephrasing what someone else said and then giving them credit. For example, I read a lot of couponing sites. The ten that I read daily are constantly linking the each other’s posts (which ironically are posts linked to other posts) and there is no true content that is theirs.
Why Is This a Problem? No matter how much time you invest in designing your blog, your content will always reign. It is not wrong to link others work, but it is unwise if 25%-75% of your blog content is based on other people’s posts. Soon enough, your blog will not be considered as a source of information because readers can just go to the blogs you link frequently instead of yours.
Problem-Solving: A smarter blog move which can make you more money in the long run is to think of and write original content that pertains to your blog niche. Yes, this does take more work, but it will pay off in the long run. Also, take tired subjects and put a spin on them. For example, the couponing blogs I just mentioned all have a post called “Couponing 101”. If a reader reads another blog’s “Couponing 101”, there is a very little chance that they will want to read yours. Putting a spin on it like, “Become a Coupon Champion: My Successful Secrets to Free Stuff” is so much more appealing and will get you more hits!
Continue the Link-Love: In hopes to make your blog stand out, you definitely want to stop the rephrasing of someone else’s post, but there is no reason not to continue linking to other blogs. It is better to pick out five blog posts you enjoyed that week and in ONE post link them all with a few words in summary. Just make sure those blogs know that you linked them so that they will feel inclined to return the favor.
So when you blog today, do not look at what the other blogs are doing. Stand out, be original! If you take the extra time to make your posts unique, then you will be rewarded with more hits, links, and possibly more advertisement in the future.
Taking someone elses content and just rephrasing it is really a problem these days - as well as content theft by spam sites. However it seems like google constantly improves in finding ways to catch the black hats - but you're right: Copying all the time will make your readers jump off to the original content source.